Well hello there, it’s me, Amazing Alex! Life can be overwhelming at times and doubt can creep into your mind. Doubt is a combined feeling of uncertainty, hesitation, and confusion. When that happens, take a deep breath and pause. I have a question for you, is your self-doubt coming from your own negative self -talk or from negative people around you? Has anyone ever told you:

“That’s too difficult; there’s no way you can do that.”

“What happens if you fail? You know failure is hard for you to take in; you will never forgive yourself.”

Have you ever wondered, where are they getting these negative comments from? Often, these negative individuals may feel that they are protecting you from getting hurt. Let them know you got this, and you will be fine. Sometimes people project their own feelings of self-doubt about themselves onto you. Guess what you can tell them:

“ I have a different perspective; sorry you feel that way, but this is my own journey.”

People may even be jealous that you are trying something new while they are stuck in their routine and are afraid of stepping out of their own comfort zone. I can go on and on about the many ways people are negative and discouraging. You are the CEO of your life and you have the power to demote, promote or fire the people you have around you. Take some time out and monitor who you have around you. Pay close attention to the people that motivate you or hinder you; then create healthy boundaries that serves your mental health. What happens if the negative self-talk is coming from you? Here are three amazing tips to challenge self-doubt:

“Challenge the negative thoughts. “

“This isn’t going to be an easy road but following my dreams are important to me. I’m willing to invest the time and work into making it happen.”

“Create long-term goals and break them down into short-term goals.”

It’s easy to doubt yourself when the task resembles a giant picture of the finishing project; break the project down into puzzle pieces. This step will help you organize your goals instead of getting overwhelmed with the steps that it will take to accomplish your dreams.

“Try.”

You never know what you are capable of until you try. Well, this is what this step is all about. Life can be filled with a bunch of “what ifs” or “I did,” the choice is yours. Take a jab at these steps and let me know if they helped with any self-doubt you’ve been dealing with lately. How do you overcome your self-doubt? Comment below and share your amazing story.

Well hello there! Its me, bridging hope Amazing Alex! We need to talk about stress and what it really is. Stress is a response that may occur due to life changes. Life is always evolving and changing around us and to us; whether its work, adjusting to a new school, changes in a marriage, or even death of a loved one. I wish I can tell you that completely avoiding stress is possible. I wish I can take stress, crumble it up like a piece of paper and hurl it into the wind. Stress can take on many forms and impact all of us differently. Eliminating all stress should not be your goal but eliminating unnecessary stress can help effectively manage the rest of it. Remember, we are all humans and some common causes of stress that many people experience can be different for each of us. Here are some examples on how to recognize how you may experience stress:

The amazing key point that I would like for you to take away from this is to eliminate stressors when you can. Ask yourself theses key questions:

Well hello there! It’s me, positive affirmations believer, overcoming achiever, Amazing Alex! When I say achiever, just know that part is continuously a goal that I strive to obtain but what does it truly mean to achieve? Is it a feeling or an action? Perhaps it’s an experience? In my opinion its all three. Something amazing happens when you accomplish something that you always wanted to achieve; it refers to attaining a desire aimed to help you become successful. The feelings that occur after you achieved your desired goal is completely determined by you. The feelings I felt when I decided to journal all seem to bring me comfort, understanding, and closure. Yet, I felt this feeling of accomplishment because I’ve personally experienced the benefits of journaling.

Over the past few weeks of journaling, I have felt feelings of happiness, frustration, admiration, determination, and most importantly, I’ve felt a new awareness about myself. Imagine for a second, writing about your fears, your strength, and your goals. How amazing is that?! You can literally have a conversation with yourself by journaling; give yourself a pep talk or help yourself process a situation. There are several benefits of journaling:

Enhance sense of well-being

Boost your mood

Reduce stress

Help process difficult events

Help shift a negative mindset

Decrease symptoms of depression

There are 6 amazing tips that I would like to share with you to help you get the most out of journaling:

Find a private place in your house that is free of distractions. Set a timer for how long you would like to write, whether its five minutes or fifteen minutes, the amount of time is up to you.

Make journaling apart of your schedule. There are twenty-four hours in a day and seven days a week. Strive to write at least four times a week or at least once a day.

A lot can happen once your pen hits the paper, or your fingertips began to make a steady beat as you type. Whichever way you decide to journal is up to you. All I ask, is after you journal, give yourself time to reflect what you have written.

What in the heck should I write about? Try journaling exactly what you are feeling in the moment. If you are still having a hard time deciding what to journal, well, think about what’s going on in your life, goals, or thoughts. Give yourself time to reflect on what you would like to journal about. If your mind starts to wonder while you are journaling, pause. Make sure you pause, reread what you’ve written down and re-focus before you start to write again.

Write in anyway that feels best to you. You have the power to structure your writing the way you want it to be.

Privacy! Privacy! Privacy! Your journal is for your eyes only. Not your family or friends, just you.

Have you ever journaled before, and if so, what was your experience like?

Like this:

Well hello there! Its me, the press forward, invest in yourself believer, Amazing Alex! A surge of feelings spill over me as I type this post because I did it! I received my Master’s in Counseling Psychology! The past two years have been bittersweet for me; long nights, numerous papers, and plenty and I mean plenty of Caramel Macchiatos from Starbucks. There are several things I’ve learned about myself over the past two years; willpower, patience and consistency. I have lost track of the many times that I had to stay at home instead of hanging out with family or friends. My phone became my worse enemy! Checking the time on my phone would lead to checking notifications and eventually mindless strolling down my Facebook news feed. Yet, I would always find the strength to put my phone on silent or completely cut my phone off.

I remember the day I decided to pursue an higher education. I was working as a Lead Behavior Coach during the time at a special day school for children with various behavior issues. As a Behavior Coach, I conducted groups centered around Nicholas Hobbs twelve principles of Re-Education for working with youth who have emotional and/or behavioral disorders. Yet, I wanted to do more to help them. I learned very quickly that majority of the children that attended this school did not have the proper tools to deal with the trauma that they’ve experienced. For many of them, my groups provided them an opportunity to built trust, self-control, self-esteem, confidence, deal with anger, and how to make healthier choices. These children will one day become adults, and I hope my time with them made an impact. I couldn’t help but think….how many adults are walking around dealing with trauma in an unhealthy way? This very thought propelled me forward to explore a chance to give back to society in a major way.

Emotions play a big role in our lives; it influences how we think and how we behave. The emotions that we feel each day impacts the decisions we make in our lives, both small and big. Obtaining my master’s degree has set me on the path to teach others coping strategies to deal with life stressors that are not detrimental to one’s well-being. Journey with me as I blog through my experience of becoming a Licensed Professional Counselor. Along the way I will share with you various techniques to cope with the numerous emotions that we experience throughout the day; I will also share with you my very own experience when I use these copings skills for myself. As always, through your consistency, commitment and consciousness, lets move forward towards being and feeling amazing together!

Well, hello there, it is me, positivity word slanging, love sprinkling Amazing Alex! Today is the day. Perhaps you are wondering what I mean; today is the day we are ridding ourselves of our limitations and barriers. Close your eyes and take a deep breath in … You already have the tools within you. With a little guidance, we can use these tools to help you come closer to becoming and/or feeling amazing. There are two words I want you to think about, positive affirmations. These are positive statements that can assist you to combat and over come self-sabotaging negative thoughts.

I am enough…say it out loud, but when you say it, I want you to believe it. To believe is to acknowledge that something is true or that it exists. To me, belief is a feeling of contentment, satisfaction, happiness and a hopeful feeling when you think ahead to the future. What did you feel when you said those words out loud? Did you feel a joyful feeling in your heart when you said that I am enough? Through consistency, commitment, and consciousness, we can work on retraining our thinking, and speaking into positive patterns to help change our lives. Today is the day to open that door. Its another opportunity to begin this change. Think about your self-talk, is your internal dialogue serving you in a positive way? Whether you know it or not, you are using affirmations in every moment. With your thoughts, words, and behavior, you are creating your own life experiences.

I know what you are thinking, affirmations almost sound unrealistic or some form of “wishful thinking.” Think of it this way, exercise is a way to improve our physical health. Think of affirmations as exercises for our mind. By making positive repetitive affirmations we can begin to think and act differently.

There is evidence that if you spend a few minutes thinking about positive affirmations of yourself, you can decrease your stress, increase your confidence and calm your nerves. Isn’t that amazing! Other studies have shown that it helps people with low self-esteem and depression. Researchers suggest that when a person has a stronger sense of self-worth, it can improve that person’s overall well-being.

What areas of your life would you like to change? Think of a specific area in your life, whether it is a behavior or belief that you have difficulty with. Focus on the things that matter to you most and write down the areas you would like to work on.

Is your affirmation achievable and credible? Have you ever heard of SMART goals? SMART goals stand for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based. I mention this because these types of goals are clear, specific, realistic and should be important to you. This is how your affirmations should be. I repeat, keep it realistic! Affirmations are not magic spells. You must believe in them and that feeling of belief is an internal source within you.

What about the negative self-talk? Turn negatives into positives. I want you to try this, write down those negative thoughts or beliefs that keep bothering you on a piece of paper. Once you’ve listed them all, throw it away! Throw those negative thoughts written down in the trash because that is where they belong. Start a new list of affirmations that are opposite of the negative list.

How should I write my affirmations? We do not want to write our affirmations in the past tense. Speak and/or write your affirmations as if it is already happening. This will feed your internal source of belief and add truth to the statement for the now.

Why should I say my affirmation statements out loud? Say it loud! Say it loud! It can help carry those affirmations with emotional weight. Make the phrase meaningful to you and find time throughout the day to say it to yourself.

Well hello there, it is I, the positivity spreading, you shall over come reminder, Amazing Alex! Consistency, consistency, consistency, consistency…what exactly does it mean and why is it important when it comes to your goals? Take some time to think about the goals you have set for yourself this year. Did you get past writing your goals down or are you in the action phase? Do you feel stuck? Consistency is taking one goal, zooming in on it, and investing time each day towards that specific goal until you’ve achieved it. Here are four amazing tips to help you stay consistent.

Self-doubt destroys consistency. Imagine self-doubt as a Negative Nancy, this person shoots down every idea that you have. A Negative Nancy has no faith in you or your work and is constantly holding you back. Please escort Negative Nancy (self-doubt) out of your house and out of your mind. Feelings of self-doubt is often caused by negative automatic thoughts. These type of thoughts are random and come from our subconscious in response to everyday events.

Building consistency is being aware of how the task makes you feel; however, you must be able to believe that you can push through the momentary discomfort. Imagine how you would feel once you completed the task. Better yet, imagine how far you’ve come before you decide to quit working towards a goal that you’ve already started on.

Utilizing these four amazing tips can help you organize your short term and long-term goals. Try these tips out as you continue with your amazing journey and let me know how it goes.

Well hello there! Its me! The positivity throwing, hope growing Amazing Alex and yes, I am extremely extra for typing all of that. I know my early post have been centered around consistency, commitment, and consciousness; these are the three C’s that I believe will help reinforce the change that you are seeking. To understand why I choose these three C’s is to understand why I call myself Amazing Alex.

Take a moment and say the word amazing out loud to yourself. How did it make you feel? Well, when I say the word amazing out loud to myself, I feel extremely confident. How I imagine Spider-Man felt the first time that he swung from his spider web successfully from building to building. The confidence you feel as a woman when you decide to try a new hairstyle for the first time and you really rock it. The Spider-Man metaphor reminds me of the many attempts that it took for me to become confident and the hair metaphor reflects my inner energy level of confidence that projects out to the world. Say the word out loud again……Amazing.

When I think of the word amazing, I don’t think of a negative experience. I think of an amazing time, amazing place, amazing feelings, amazing experiences and amazing as being filled with wonder. Throw Alex behind it and BOOM! You get this explosive personality that enjoys motivating other people and providing people with the tools they need to strive towards being and feeling amazing. Amazingness is fluent and the best part of it all is that you define what amazing means to you. Whether it is an experience, accomplishment, and/or feeling, throw Amazing in front of it and let me know how it makes you feel.